Please help with halogen

[Renouji]

So Thor was moved from his quarantine tank to his full tank finally today. During my tests of his environment the substrate on the hot side was barely hitting 92° – 94°, and wouldn't you know it the minute I turn on his light it burnt out, so I rushed to Home Depot and bought a 120 watt halogen heat bulb thinking it should tie him over till the pet store opened in the morning. Boy was I off, his substrate hit 96° before I knew it, so I attached one of my dimmers and set it to half way which set his substrate at 91°. What size halogen should I be using in his tank so I can have a good heat gradient and lighting in there? As it stands now the light is poor being set to half power, plus it emits a high pitched humming that I can hear at this setting. His tank is 48"x24"x24" and I'm measuring temps digitally.

Thanks in advance
Ren

[The Serpent Merchant]

Halogen bulbs really aren't the best choice for ball pythons.

1. They produce too much heat

3. They are way too bright

3. Dimming them drastically reduces the bulbs lifespan as they require a certain internal operating temperature.

A 100 watt infrared incandescent heat bulb would be a much better choice, and a thermostat instead of a lamp dimmer would make it even better.

I highly recommend this bulb:

http://m.petsmart.com/mt/www.petsmar...AvailInUS%2FNo

It seems like you are trying to heat the cage too much. The optimal cage temps are 90 hot side and 80 cool side.

[Renouji]

I see, I tried keeping his basking spot closer to 90 but then his coolie was dropping to room temp which is 78°. So I felt increasing it to 92°-94° was acceptable since it is still within their range and allows his cool side to be 80°. Then I'll just return the halogen to home Depot tomorrow. I am just using the lamp until the flex watt I ordered comes in then I'm gonna install that as his primary heat source covering about 1/2 to 2/3 of his floor space, I am looking for a good thermostat to control that. At that point I'm going to switch his lighting to led.

[Kaorte]

78º for the cool side is perfectly fine.

Get a herpstat. You won't be sorry.

[Renouji]

I don't think its perfectly fine the heating is controlled by the landlord and ambient drops to 68-70 I've woken to his tank as low as 70. In my test when cool side was 80 temperatures dropped to 75 over night, that's my comfort zone for him.

[Kaorte]

I don't think its perfectly fine the heating is controlled by the landlord and ambient drops to 68-70 I've woken to his tank as low as 70. In my test when cool side was 80 temperatures dropped to 75 over night, that's my comfort zone for him.

Okay well, you said the cool side was 78º and you wanted to raise it to 80º. You said nothing about the temps dropping that low. We aren't psychic...

75º is fine for the minimum temp. I also would not feel comfortable going lower then that.

[Renouji]

Realized I neglected to specify that, is why I said it . On the flip side now suddenly my baby balls tank is having heat issues, her tank got upto 102 after I left for work, so sometime between 12pm and 4:30pm her tank rose 15 degrees! The gf :cens0r::cens0r::cens0r::cens0r: her tank off, I think that she's picking up heat from his tank but his thermostat reads 88.7 at the time my fiancee checked it. Odd.